I’m as fond of gadgets as the next girly geek. Probably fonder, as Sarah can testify – at the Girl Geek Dinner on 26 September 2007 I won a lifetime’s supply of mobile games from Astraware (no Symbian games yet sadly, but they’re on the way) for having brought the most gadgets. 7 I think it was, including LG Shine and Chocolate, 8 if you count my radio-controlled watch with day and date – and I didn’t even bring my Nokia 7710!

I also love tech toy sites and magazines (I decline to use the term “boy’s toys”). I’ve been buying T3 magazine since issue 1, i.e. for years, as I prefer it to the other UK gadget magazines. Overall I rather like its light, humourous approach.

I’ve got used to the fact that, as in other magazines and on TV, etc, images of scantily-clad women are used to sell stuff as standard, with the cover invariably displaying a huge photo of a near-naked female model – with a scattering of very much smaller pics of gizmos, lest you forget that this mag is actually about technology and gadgets.

I’ll boldly whip out issues of T3 on public transport, impervious to the stares of commuters wondering why I have the nerve to read Playboy openly on the Tube. How dare I do that during rush hour when there’s barely room to stand never mind open a mag, tsk tsk!

I’ve even got used to T3 steadfastly ignoring their female readership, putting up with their regular digs (which they clearly think are funny) about “the wife” or “the girlfriend”, or about women not being able to cope with technology. Which they presumably feel they can more than adequately “balance out” by tokenly printing, maybe once every 2 or 3 years, the occasional letter from one or other geek girl pointing out that females do read gadget mags too (and not just for kitchen-related or household cleaning tools), or wearily asking for some photos of hunky men for a change, at least.

But the November 2007 issue was the first time I seriously took offence.

Am I’m being over-sensitive, or do you think I have a point?

It was a video special. It included 3 full-page photos of a female model (shown here for review and criticism purposes only), in only underwear and stockings of course, posing with different gadgets. Par for the course so far.

But then in tiny print in the top right hand corner of each page, they inserted various derogatory comments.

Pg. 63. Model holding up an Archos 605 wifi PMP. Text: “Hello? Yes? Is there anyone there? Oh man, this phone is useless.”

Pg. 67. Model sitting next to a TV (page on Tiscali TV). Text: Yeah, you wanna put the armchair facing the TV, love. That way you can see what’s on.

Pg. 71. Model holding up a Casio EX-S880. Text: “Ha ha! You may be photographing me, but I’m photographing you. Oh, no, hang on. Am I holding this right?”

Normally I just let those sorts of comments in T3 wash over me, but I actually felt quite angry about those. Certainly enough to blog about it. It’s totally unnecessary, gratuitously insulting. Why can’t women be glamorous, or indeed just be female, and understand technology? (I give you, again, Hedy Lamarr). To me, those comments really crossed the stereotyping line. It’s perfectly possibly to be funny without being blatantly sexist.

I virtually had to get out a magnifying glass to read that text. Maybe the guy who wrote it thought that if he made it small enough, haha female readers wouldn’t notice. But why on earth would he imagine that we’d miss that? Hey, we’ve become adept at spotting even tinier body parts on men and pretending that they’re much, much, much bigger, ooooooooooh – although that magnifying glass may well come in handy to help detect his in the extremely unlikely event that anyone should feel inclined to try to find it, perhaps as a challenging change from orienteering. But a microscope would probably be better in that case. (See, I can do gratuitous insults too. In case anyone wondered. Tit for miniscule tat, and all that.)

So please tell me, do you think I’m over-reacting – or not? And what’s the betting that those who think the former, probably as “Anonymous”, will mostly be male?

About Imp

Imp is one of our Girl Geek Dinners regulars and has a passion for mobile devices. When you see her just ask her how many phones she has with her this time!

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 11:30 am and is filed under News, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.